


Love the Ones You Hurt

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Naruto
Genre: 1000-3000 words, AU: evil goateed universe, Challenge: AU Bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-timeskip AU, set post-timeskip. Blindness is something that happens to other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love the Ones You Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how well this works outside my brain...I was trying to keep it short so as to nip any epics in the bud.

The scene wavered around him, reality unraveling thread by thread. First color faded, then depth, then shape. And only then—with a sound like a taut wire snapping—did Tsukiyomi finally break.

Sasuke fell to his knees as soon as the genjutsu was gone, clutching at his eye socket; the pain was horrifying, what was left of his vision swimming from the sheer brutality of the assault on his nerves. How—when—

"You've grown tremendously, Sasuke," came Itachi's dispassionate voice from above, "but you are still too weak."

  
Madara wiped his hands clean of blood before lifting the genjutsu. The shift to consciousness was subtle—the soft sound of moving air, the barely perceptible rise of his chest as he took in that first deep breath. Itachi swung his legs off the operating carefully, already reaching up one hand to probe at the bandages around his eyes.

"Well, Itachi?" Madara said, handing him his shirt. "How do you feel?"

Itachi turned his shirt around by feel before pulling it on, motions careful but not tentative. "Difficult to say. Better, I think. Even accounting for fatigue from the battle."

"That's the advantage of being immortal," Madara said, handing Itachi his cloak. This Itachi also pulled on by feel, conscientiously buttoning it up to its usual height halfway up his torso. "You'll need to rest for a few days in order to recover from the surgery."

"Mm," Itachi replied noncommitally, already stepping away from the table.

"Well then, off you go." Madara pressed a hand between Itachi's shoulder blades, feeling the way he stiffened automatically at the unexpected touch, and guided him out the doorway. "I'll check in on you tomorrow to see how you're adapting to Sasuke's eyes."

The door slammed shut behind him. Itachi paused for a moment, hand on the wall, pulling up a mental map of the Akatsuki's Amegakure base.

"Done?" Kisame asked, striding up behind him.

"Yes," Itachi said. "Though it seems I'll require a few days' rest."

"Ah. Stands to reason." He heard the scuff of Kisame walking up to him. "Want some help getting back to your room?"

Itachi paused for a moment. "That would be appreciated."

"Alright. 'Scuse me, here." Kisame slid his fingers around Itachi's arm and tugged gently. They set off down the hallway, side by side. After a while, he asked, "Was it really necessary to let him live? Your brother, I mean."

"There was no point to killing him," Itachi replied. "Without his eyes, he's useless. He's no threat to me."

"Huh," Kisame said after a moment. "Well, I always said you were a cold one."

  
"Itachi was sending information about the _clan_ to the _village,"_ Madara said impassively. "I believe the common term is 'double agent.'" Sasuke had curled on his side some time earlier, hands knotted in the blanket draped over his body. Madara paused for a moment to let his words sink in, with only the sound of Sasuke's ragged breathing to disturb the silence. He lowered his voice and continued softly, "You can't even _begin_ to imagine the burden he had to carry—"

"Stop feeding him lies, Madara," Itachi broke in. Sasuke shifted his head slightly at the sound of his voice, but otherwise made no move.

"Whoops, looks like I got caught," Madara said cheerfully, chair scraping over the rough ground as he stood. "Ahh, well, it made a good story at least, didn't it, Sasuke?"

Footsteps receded from the bed. "I'll just leave you two brothers to some quality bonding time, shall I?" Madara said, before the door slammed shut on his voice.

For a long moment, neither of the two left behind moved. Then Itachi dragged the room's lone chair chair closer to the bed and said, "Sasuke. If you sit up, I'll change your bandages."

Sasuke curled up tighter, mouth set in a flat, stubborn line.

"If you have questions, I'll answer them now as well," Itachi said. "But even if you don't wish to speak to me, your bandages need changing."

After a long moment, Sasuke sat up, hugging his knees to his bare chest. Something was set down on the bed beside him, and then he felt the tug of the bandages around his eyes being unwound. Itachi didn't say anything, seeming content to keep quiet if Sasuke would.

As the last of the bandages left his face, Sasuke screwed up the last of his will to speak. "Why," he began, but the croak that came out of his mouth hardly sounded like speech at all.

"Wait." There was the rustle of cloth as Itachi turned away, then the chink of glass against glass. Something cool and tall and round was pressed into Sasuke's hands, Itachi cupping his own hands around them in order to guide the glass to Sasuke's mouth. "Drink."

The worst had already happened. It barely occurred to Sasuke to be suspicious as he drank deeply of the cool water, rolling the faint metallic taste around his mouth. No sight, he thought in despair. All he had left was everything else.

When the glass had been emptied, Itachi pulled it away and set it aside. "What was it you wished to ask, Sasuke?"

Sasuke opened his mouth, but somewhere along the way the question he'd wanted to ask became, "Was everything Madara said about…the Kyuubi attack, and the coup…true?"

"Without knowing what exactly it was that he said, I can't say," Itachi said, hands moving briskly as he wove the bandages under Sasuke's hair and around his eyes. "But yes. The second Kyuubi attack did foster a great deal of mistrust of the clan, and the clan did eventually decide to plan a coup."

"Then…" Sasuke swallowed. "Were you really a double agent?"

"No," Itachi said. From the sound of his voice, they might as well as have been discussing the weather. "My position in the ANBU made my loyalties suspect from the start. I was never approached for any such thing."

"Then…did you spy on the clan for the village?"

"No." Itachi paused, slipping fingertips between the bandages and Sasuke's forehead to test their tightness. "My position as clan heir also made my loyalties suspect from the start—though from the opposite direction."

Sasuke paused for a moment, searching Itachi's cool voice for any trace of the brother he had once known, and hating himself for it. "Then…that night…"

"I had no reason to lie to you," Itachi said simply, tying off the ends of the bandages. "That night…I spoke what I thought to be the truth."

"What? Then why didn't you just kill me when I failed?" Sasuke said bitterly, words ashen in his mouth. "All that crap about testing your _capacity—"_

For a long moment, there was no reply. Sasuke was beginning to be afraid that Itachi had just left, that he was huddled on this bed waiting for an answer that would never come. But he was wrong, but eventually Itachi moved in his seat and said, "For the same reason I didn't kill you the night of the massacre."

"What does that even mean?" Sasuke demanded angrily. "That's not an answer, that's—"

"We'll always be brothers," Itachi said. "Even when you hate me. Even when I take away your light. Always…you will be my brother."

"What? What kind of answer is that?" Sasuke turned blindly. "That doesn't answer anything!"

"You should rest, Sasuke," Itachi said abruptly, voice rising upwards and away. "I'll come change your bandages again tomorrow."

"Itachi— _Itachi—!"_

The only reply was the sound of the door swinging shut. Sasuke sat in his bed feeling angry and stupid and helpless; why had he expected anything different? He lay back down, pulling the blankets over his head, and thought of the day three years ago when he walked away, when Naruto had tried to pull him back, and he thought: _I should have listened. I should have stayed._

  
Naruto froze as a familiar figure stepped out from behind a tree just ahead. Sasuke was lying in his arms—it had to be him, had to be; Naruto would have recognized that duckbutt hair anywhere.

"You bastard!" he shouted, hands balling into fists at his side. "What did you do to him!?"

Unfazed, Itachi simply knelt and placed Sasuke on the ground, before rising and taking out the kage bunshin leaping at him from behind in one smooth movement. "He's merely sleeping," Itachi said. "The drug will wear off in a few hours."

Every instinct in Naruto's body shouted for him to run over to Sasuke's still body, but he forced himself to stay still. _If it's one, run and flee…_ he thought. _No eye contact. Watch the body and the feet for clues…_

But instead of fighting, or even dissolving into the by-now familiar crows, Itachi simply turned to go as if Naruto was of no consequence whatsoever. "Take care of him," he said. "You are better qualified to be his brother than I."


End file.
